Left Faction סיעת שמאל | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Moshe Sneh |
| Founded | 20 February 1952 |
| Dissolved | 1 November 1954 |
| Split from | Mapam |
| Merged into | Maki,Mapam |
| Political position | Left-wing |
| Most MKs | 3 (1952-1954) |
| Fewest MKs | 3 (1952-1954) |
TheLeft Faction (Hebrew:סיעת שמאל,Siat Smol) was a short-livedpolitical party inIsrael.
The Left Faction was formed on 20 February 1952 (during thesecond Knesset) as a breakaway fromMapam in the aftermath of thePrague Trials. Theshow trials in which mostlyJewish leaders of theCommunist Party of Czechoslovakia were purged, falsely implicatedMapam's envoy inPrague,Mordechai Oren, as part of aZionist conspiracy. This, and laterNikita Khrushchev'sSecret Speech at the20th Party Congress in the Soviet Union, led to Mapam moving away from some of their more radical left wing positions, and towards social democracy.
Unhappy with the move, several Mapam MKs left the party;Moshe Aram,Yisrael Bar-Yehuda,Yitzhak Ben-Aharon andAharon Zisling set upAhdut HaAvoda-Poale Zion,Hannah Lamdan andDavid Livschitz created theFaction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda, whilstRostam Bastuni (the firstIsraeli Arab MK representing a Zionist party),Adolf Berman andMoshe Sneh established the Left Faction.
However, the party ceased to exist on 1 November 1954 when Bastuni returned to Mapam and Berman and Sneh joined the communist party,Maki.[1]